Dr Hume says, 'Despite its relatively recent extinction, the life history of the dodo continues to elude us.

'More is known about the population structure, nesting behaviour, eggs and young of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, than that of a bird that disappeared in very recent historical times due to human interference.

'This 3D atlas opens up new avenues for investigating the life of this fascinating bird.'

Below is an interactive scan of the dodo from the Durban Natural Science Museum. The scans have been digitally remounted so the bird is in an anatomically correct pose.

A new opportunity

The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) - a giant flightless pigeon that once lived on Mauritius - is the most famous species to have gone extinct in human history. But despite its fame, little is known of its anatomy and biology.

The dodo was extinct by 1693, less than a hundred years after the discovery and colonisation of Mauritius by the Dutch.

No complete specimens survive from collections made before the bird went extinct. Only a few fragments remain: a single dried head, a skull, a beak and a foot.

Until the mid-nineteenth century, almost everything that was known about the dodo was based on illustrations and written accounts of seventeenth-century sailors.

The first scientific description of the dodo’s anatomy, based on partial skeletons, was published in 1866 by Sir Richard Owen, who helped create the Natural History Museum.

The digital reconstruction, produced using 3D laser surface scanning, provides new opportunities to investigate the palaeobiology and evolution of this little understood species.

The Thirioux skeleton

The dodo skeletons used to create the reconstruction were discovered by an amateur naturalist, Etienne Thirioux, between 1899 and 1910.

The discoveries have never been described scientifically before, despite the Thirioux skeleton in the Mauritius Institute representing the only known complete dodo skeleton, and the only one consisting of bones from just one bird.

The second Thirioux specimen, now housed in the Durban Natural Science Museum, is nearly complete but may have been put together from the remains of more than one bird. The significance of the two skeletons remained overlooked until now.

David Allan, Curator of Ornithology at Durban Natural Science Museum, adds: 'We have proudly displayed one of the two Thirioux dodo skeletons for almost a century in our public galleries, but we had no idea of the profound significance and value of this priceless specimen until this research was undertaken by Prof Leon Claessens and his team.'

Future learning

Evidence suggests that dodos were not hunted into extinction by Dutch settlers, partly because the human population of Mauritius was so low.

Instead, it’s likely that introduced species including pigs and rats caused the dodo’s extinction by competing for food sources and preying on dodo eggs and chicks.

The team that worked on this project performed 10 years of interdisciplinary research to understand what the ecosystem of the dodo looked like, both in the seventeenth century and thousands of years ago.

They hope the 3D atlas will inspire more research into the bird and the ecosystem it lived in.

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